Aibu to not want a £15 minimum wage?

[Israisingwagesworthit]

This morning I saw a post saying there are calls for a £15 per hour minimum wage.

I understand fully that the current minimum wage doesn't give people enough to survive on and something needs to change to ensure everyone gets a comfortable living wage, and I support this.

However by pushing up the minimum wage doesn't that just add additional costs for businesses, therefore increase costs to consumers removing any benefit of an increased minimum wage in addition to reducing the disposable income and pay gap of anyone above minimum wage.

Surely this only benefits the government with additional income tax?

Is this the best option in a time of potential 18% inflation, would this not increase it further?

Capitalism is the issue, rather than sharing the profit wealth, CEO's (of all levels of business, small and large) keep the profits for themselves and just raise prices when costs go up.

Am i being unreasonable to assume that in order for the £15ph wage to be successful, companies must accept lower profits rather than increasing prices in line with the wage increase otherwise its just pointless and daminging to all wage earners not just the minimum wage.

Won't the government have to threaten windfall taxes to those who increase prices to maintain profits to make it work and to actually benefit minimum wage earners?

I'll admit I'm a middle earner (£40k) civil servant (so no chance of a payrise anytime soon) so would be financially damaged by a raise in minimum wage if nothing is done to stop the subsequently price increases of products after a minimum pay rise. As a result my view may be biased, but am I wrong?

@BarryBantam I don't have staff honey. Are you mixing me with another poster perhaps? X

As I said there are other issues, many other issues - thats why I said in and of itself People seem to be failing to understand the very very basics of it whilst trying to argue things that are extremely complex. Fundamentals first.

Apologies, got confused with all the quotes etc. My last comment was aimed at @Anothernamechangeplease who doesn't seem to realise that her own benefit claiming employees are, financially at least, vulnerable.

@Anothernamechangeplease

I'm ok with that. I'm ok with your charity closing.

Taxpayers absolutely should be picking up the tab for services for the vulnerable.

I get that, and it's partly the fault of government for underfunding and introducing student loans, especially for nurses. A job saving lives can't be done forever anyway, it's clearly too much pressure. I would have thought you could move to other areas in the same field that are less pressurised or related areas rather than only having retail work etc. as an option to reduce stress.

Lol @beachcitygirl yes!

How about instead of holding people down so others don't feel put out we try and raise the standard for as many working people as possible

but if a lot of people’s salary increases then prices will go up and we’ll be back to square one, wouldn’t we? And the poor buggers whose salary won’t increase or the ones fully on benefitswill even be worse off!

It is not a matter of « keeping lower paid workers at the bottom », it is about making something that will work!

Heaven forbid corporate profit margins decrease ever so slightly!

Here is my formula for what the minimum wage should be:

Get the median UK full time wage (Google says £31,285)
take 60% of that to get the individual poverty threshold
divide poverty threshold by the number of weeks you expect someone to work (say 48)
divide by the number of hours per week (say 37.5 or 40)

The result will be minimum wage needs to be about 10 pounds in order to give a full-time worker an income that is 60% of the median full-time income.

(The poverty line is usually defined as a household income 60% of the median, the idea of defining an individual rather than household poverty threshold is something I've made up, for the purposes of this post.)

Self employed have to charge more because they don't get the benefits of employment such as paid holidays, sick pay, pensions, training/materials/equipment, etc. paid for by an employer.

Increasing wages by 50% wouldn't decrease profits "ever so slightly" - it would completely wipe out many firms, especially those like supermarkets who work on small margins and whose biggest cost is their wage bill!

Of course at the moment there is a massive squeeze on household budgets because of increased energy and food costs, but in more "normal" times I'd say the thing that makes the cost of living unaffordable for those on lower incomes is high housing costs. Would bringing back rent controls be a better option?

@beachcitygirl

I didn't know I had a way out, I hoped I had a way out because I struggled to put the money and time to train myself to try and do something else.

No - you're the one lacking in empathy if you think teachers working with children, many with various issues and often under the age of 13 for, don't have a far greater emotional burden than a supermarket worker who sees adult who may put some items back. They know their names, their favourite colours, they celebrate festivals with them etc, it's just not the same as seeing people a couple of times a week at a check-out even if you have a brief chat with them.

Having also worked in call centres where toilet breaks were timed, I have every sympathy for improving conditions in the service industry, so please quit the high winded poor attempt at emotional blackmail. It's sanctimonious and unnecessary and quite frankly off-topic.

What I and many others are trying to get through to you is that this work is simply not comparable to teaching. I identified a few differences and am still going through the thread, but I've noticed others have mentioned training time/costs etc too. I can't be bothered re-hashing the arguments but other people have clearly stated the points.

To come back to the original topic, if these workers see a steep rise in wages everyone else's will need to rise significantly too so we can all deal with the inevitable hike in rents and prices which will bring us all back to square one. And that is the bottom line.

However if we deal with the root causes such as super high rents and housing prices and energy prices then it will be win for everyone.

Yes of course i remember but the reality is for everyone, inc teachers and health workers, Supermarket staff were what we all needed, as everyone lined up queuing outside to buy food.

No one can do anything without food.

Or how about we address the cost of living so that whatever is being earned is sufficient to live?

It doesn't actually matter where the scale starts from, it could start at 50p per hour or £500ph that's just numbers. What matters is what your wage can buy you. If lowest wages don't cover living then the whole system has to be propped up. If we are propping up we are artificially inflating everything by creating the illusion that there is more money - which means rents can be higher, people can charge more for services and so on. Prices go up because people have more disposable income notnbecause more of their income comes from a wage packet.

As someone said earlier two issues are being conflated and presented as being the cause of/solution for each other. However that isn't accurate.

I think it's the opposite of the trickle down economics theory. Low earners are precisely the people who should get more money from an economic perspective. They spend it. They spend a bit more on a weekly shop, buy a winter coat, get a take away etc. The really well off who earn x times the average worker generally won't buy x more pairs of jeans, tins of beans, etc.

So yes, more goes to HMRC, but it also means more jobs for retail, decorators, etc etc etc who in turn spend more on beans, take away, clothes, etc.

Yes to rent controls and security etc. There must be better models for renting than ours.

Actually he kind of did as it was a health shop selling products that could have adverse effects if not taken correctly or taken along side other medications.

I think that this is a slightly moot point though because most high earners are not saving lives day after day. If the argument is that nurses, paramedics etc should earn more than I don't disagree. If the minimum wage was £15 then they should have an equal rise.

Agreed! We really need to get a handle on how much housing costs are.

There was a thread on here yesterday about a woman who earns over 50K who is facing a 3k mortgage since her husband walked out. 50K looks great on it's own but with a 3K mortage it's not.

Same as many young professionals who get decent wages in London but then shelling out £800 for a room in a house and for those who don't want to or can't house share - don't even me started on how much a 1-bed in London costs.

@Cyclemarine

It's absolutely not off-topic.

Working in a mind-numbing, insecure, low status, toilet regulated, low paid, unsociable hours, physically demanding job is as stressful & tough than many much higher paid higher status roles. Including but not restricted to teaching.

Teachers aren't the only special people & they are not more deserving of a decent salary than others.

Min wage workers getting more money does not impact teachers in the slightest.

If any teacher wants to leave teaching to go for the min wage supermarket job.

Fine.

Honestly I think the problem is the fact that we attach individual human worth to the size of someone's bank balance.
Not big enough bank balance = not good enough human, and they're treated as such.

People are scared that someone worth less than them may be getting something they're not, something that they feel they should get and as they don't, don't think anyone worth less than them should get it either.

Most people work hard, up until recently it's been an employer's market and not working hard in any job means you won't keep it for long because the employer wants their money's worth. The work can be manual and physical, it can be literally saving lives, it can be the responsibility of keeping everything afloat and sourcing the work to be done, it can be keeping the infrastructure going - they're all interlinked and when one area falters then they all start to. When one area is dismissed as lower value then things start to falter across the board.

The issue lies with the attitude of who deserves what, and that those at the lower end of the scale are worth less and therefore less deserving of fundamental things like a wage that provides the basics, being treated with common decency and their value being recognised past what their payslip says.

Some people are driven, are able to take up opportunities, create opportunity for themselves, some aren't driven, miss opportunity because it's not right at that time, aren't able to create an opportunity - but we in some way rely on them all in order to keep the whole thing afloat. There's nothing wrong with someone earning more because they've created or taken an opportunity - what's wrong is when they devalue the people who haven't.
And there's nothing wrong with someone who earns less because they haven't had or haven't been able to take up such opportunities - what's wrong is when they devalue those that have.

I wouldn't want my boss's job, and that responsibility, but then I don't devalue her for having the extra money attached to it, and she doesn't devalue me for not wanting that responsibility because my pay slip doesn't have the same number of zero's as hers.

We both recognise neither of us would have a job without the other.

You are assuming a company prices their products according to minimum wage. They dont. They price it as high as they think they can get away with.
Also wages are a relatively small part of the cost structure for large companies. Fixed costs (rent/utilities etc) repairs and maintenance, supplies, distribution are also in the mix.
Wages do not effect market value. They do of course have an effect on profit margin.
Also what is rarely mentioned is that when wages rise, people have more disposable income left over with which to buy more stuff. All that money gets spent in the community pretty quickly because most people on minimum wage spend what they earn. Overall there are winners and losers, but overall businesses will get more patronage. Increased revenues to cover increase costs. The qualifier the question is won't businesses raise prices to be to keep the exact same net income. But in the same way they never reduce costs when costs fall, the same way wages are only part of the overall cost equation, is the reason my response is - they just won't. They will continue to charge the highest they think we will stomach.
Also. By virtue of paye collected at source, wage increases directly raise tax revenues better than the collection of corporation tax ever does. transfer pricing, artificial group management fees, profit shifting and group loss reliefs see to that.....

It's not about how hard a job is, but the level of responsibility it holds.

I'm responsible for decisions which could be life or death for some people, I have the weight of that responsibility on me all day everyday. I have to make decisions quickly that I then have to defend if something goes wrong. It's not just my career at stake, it's people's lives, people being abused. I love my job, I love helping people but it's a hell of a lot of responsibility.

If nmw goes up, the people I manage wages will go up (because it's currently less than £15) but mine won't so I'll have all that extra responsibility for no more pay. No one would move in to management. And it's the NHS so my 'company' won't have to step up, we'll just have bigger staffing issues than we currently do.

Love of the job only takes you so far, eventually you crack.

They elided over everything except your salary which automatically makes you wrong, you see?🙄

Most people are employed by small and medium-sized businesses. They cannot afford a minimum of £15 an hour wages for jobs that simply don't pull in that kind of money. Plus they are far more likely to spend a large part of their incoming on staff costs.
They would go out of business, pure and simple.
Also, don't forget that consumers now have a lot more choice thanks to globalised trade. If prices go up, even larger firms suffer.